“If you insist,” said Greer, reaching in and grabbing another cookie.
“Thanks so much for coming to dinner and answering all my questions,” said Charlie, standing up and giving me a strange look that asked, What is wrong with you, beyond the usual?
Mrs. Goodkeep was not going to give me any more time, that was what was wrong with me. But of course I had no way to convey that reply to Charlie’s tacit question.
We all walked Jasper to the door and saw him out. He left with a wave.
“He’s so nice,” said Charlie. She turned to come back inside, but I stopped her. Greer, who had sensed what I was about to do, stood with me.
“Actually, Charlie, I have something to talk to you about,” I said.
Charlie frowned and looked past me into the living room. “Can’t I come in?” she asked.
“It’s probably best if you didn’t just yet,” I said. “I have something to show you.”
Charlie gave a loud sigh. “I knew there was something. You’ve been acting nervous since I showed up. At first I thought it was because you didn’t want me here, but that isn’t it, is it? Fine, let’s talk.”
Here went nothing. Or, you know, everything.
Chapter Twelve
There were several old chairs and benches on the porch, and the three of us sat down and settled in for our super serious discussion about the fact that the lawn had a ghost blanket most evenings and the attic was used to store spell books. Paws came to join us, sitting on his window perch. “This is the big ta da moment?” the cat said excitedly. “That’s why I kept my pearls on.”
“I take it Greer knows what you’re about to tell me?” Charlie didn’t sound hurt, but there was an edge to her voice.
“I had to tell anyone who was going to live here,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have told her either, and I wanted to see if you and Andy might work it out before I decided.”
“Oh, we’re not going to,” Charlie said, crossing her arms over her chest in a decisive movement. “I’ve decided I’m too good for him.”
“That’s true,” said Greer.
When Charlie glared at her, Greer defended herself. “He didn’t like Charger!”
“He slobbers,” said Charlie.
“So?” said Greer.
“So, Andy always wore nice pants,” said Charlie. Then she paused. “So nothing! He didn’t like Charger and it was ridiculous.”
At that moment, the lab pushed the porch door open and came to lie at Greer’s feet.
“I’ve known you’ve had a secret, like I said. I’m glad you’re just going to tell me, at last,” said Charlie, “because Andy and I are definitely not getting back together.”
“Okay, here goes,” I said, taking a deep breath. Mrs. Goodkeep hadn’t appeared around the side of the house yet, I could only imagine because Mr. Bone was buying me time. But given how angry she was I probably didn’t have long.
“I’m a witch, and I can see ghosts,” I said. With that I touched Paws and closed my eyes. He shimmered there, a ghostly presence, not cold or warm but full of light and wind and sparkles. I heard Charlie gasp.
“Yes, darling, I am gorgeous,” said Paws as I opened my eyes. The cat threw back his head in pride, and if cats could smirk, Paws definitely was.
Charlie was staring at the cat until a movement distracted her. The tea ladies were laying out their nightly spread, ignoring us. My friend’s mouth gaped wider. When a mouse skittered across the porch, I thought for sure Charlie was going to lose it. Greer and I exchanged glances, waiting for the explosion.
“This is . . . wow . . . they’re so pretty,” said Charlie. Greer frowned. Charlie was taking this better than we had expected her to.
“I mean, everyone knew your grandmother was a witch,” said Charlie to me. “I didn’t know what your powers were, but I’m a reporter. I’ve heard some crazy stuff in my life, and now I can see it with my own eyes. Besides, you’re my best friend and Greer believes you. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?”
I was so relieved I lunged across the porch and wrapped her tightly in a hug.
“You’re the best,” I said. “I wasn’t sure . . . some people think it sounds crazy.”
“Mintwood has seen its share of crazy,” said Charlie. “Your grandmother was the best of it. I just wish I had known sooner. All the weird noises around the property, are those ghosts?”
“Probably,” I said. “They do their best to make their presence known.”
“And who are you?” said Charlie, smiling at Paws.
“I’m Paws,” said the cat. “I run this place.”
“You clearly do,” said Charlie, smiling broadly.
“Stop sucking up to the ghost cat,” said Greer.
“Why? He’s pretty! I’m sure he knows everything there is to know about this place,” said Charlie, still smiling.
“Doesn’t mean he’s going to tell you,” said Greer.
“I will if she keeps saying nice things,” said Paws.
“Why would you want her to lie to you?” said Greer.
The cat sniffed.
“I’m not arguing any more with something that isn’t there,” said Greer.
“Just because you know you’ve lost,” said Paws. He jumped off the crate, strutted over to Charlie, and rubbed his shimmery body against her legs, making her giggle. Then he jumped off the porch.
“Scaredy cat,” Greer called.
“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” said Paws over his shoulder.
The relief flooding through my body was unlike anything I had ever felt, and I couldn’t stop smiling. The three of us stayed on the porch chatting long into the night. Charlie liked to turn around and watch all the ghosts, and when she wasn’t doing that she was asking questions about my grandmother, what the ghosts were doing on the property, and how everything worked. Greer, who hadn’t heard a lot of this herself, listened in fascination.
“My grandmother loved being a witch,” I said. “She wanted me to love it too.” Some of the rest of what I told them they already knew, because in the end it boiled down to a snapshot of our home town and our life there.
Mintwood was a small town filled with quiet, tree lined-streets. In the fall the winds gusted, in the winter the snow fell, spring brought bursting green and swirling mud, and summer brought the hot sun. The streets were cobblestone and many of the houses were old Victorians, with white picket fences in front of big yards. The main street was very popular with townsfolk, neighboring townsfolk, and people from away. The cozy mix of shops, a delightful café, a yummy bakery, a historic stone library, and a wild costume shop, all brought warmth and comfort to the folk of Mintwood. The seasons changed, but there was one constant in town, and that was ghosts. As a witch myself, I was well versed in ghosts and I didn’t mind them one bit. I didn’t mind the ones who had tea parties on my lawn or the ones who liked to pop out of their graves at night for a chat and a whiff of the clear night air.
Each town had a witch. We were considered a loose coven, the ones nearest to us offering support, warmth, and a dollop of threats if word of our secret were to get out. I had always known this day would come, the one where I took over the Witch of Mintwood duties from my grandmother. Now I was the Witch of Mintwood, heaven help me. One of the default witch jobs was to investigate ghost murders, because we were the only ones they could speak to.
As I said, there had always been rumors, but no one thought my grandmother was a real witch. They’d thought of her as a cozy sort of witch, one who liked incense and clothing that tinkled as she moved and belly laughs and frogs. They thought this was darling and eccentric, but not exactly true. They were wrong, but hopefully they’d never know that.
My life in Mintwood revolved around my grandmother’s farmhouse and my two best friends. I had a love life like I had a doctorate in astrophysics; I was more likely to get a sunburn than a boyfriend. Nothing against Mintwood boys, some were very dishy, but none of the dishes were intere
sted in me, nor did I find them all that appetizing in return. It was like when Charlie cooked, it looked good on the outside, but the taste wasn’t up to par. There was one boy . . . but my grandmother had forbidden me to even say his name, not that he would have been interested in me anyhow. He’d be a dish no matter where he lived or who was interested, whether Mintwood, population four thousand, or NYC, population a lot more than that.
My two best friends, on the other hand, were around all the time, and my grandmother had loved them dearly, recognizing that Charlie and Greer were totally different. Greer took no crap, but loved to dish it out, while Charlie never had a hair out of place and had never met a rule she didn’t follow to the T. We had all grown up in Mintwood as the best of friends, and even now, little did I know that assuming the role of the Witch of Mintwood would have consequences I couldn’t possibly foresee.
Talking to ghosts was just the beginning.
Chapter Thirteen
We stayed up late talking, but eventually all of us went to sleep. The conversation with Charlie had gone better than I expected, so that, at least, was good. But the next morning I woke up to the unpleasant realization that Gracie Coswell was still missing.
I rolled over in bed and groaned. Now that Charlie knew my secret, I supposed technically I could stop looking into Gracie’s disappearance, since Mrs. Goodkeep could no longer motivate me with threats. The police were aware that Gracie was missing, and their efforts were surely a lot more useful than anything I could do . . . except that I could talk to ghosts.
I’d be doing a lot of that tonight, because I decided not to give up the search.
The first thing I intended to do was to talk to Hank’s witness, whoever he might be. After that I had to go to the Babbling Brook Road Barn, because I had promised the ghosts who lived there that I’d stop by.
To make matters worse it was Sunday, and apparently Charlie had spent every Sunday of her life cleaning. Today was not expected to be any different.
When a loud whirring noise disturbed my comfortable laziness, I finally threw off my bedcovers and pulled on a sweater. Greer met me at the top of the landing and we marched downstairs together. I knew what we were going to find, but seeing Charlie vacuuming the living room on a Sunday morning, wearing massive pink headphones over her ears and singing at the top of her lungs, was still something of a shock.
Before Charlie noticed us, Greer hopped down the stairs and pulled the plug on the vacuum’s power cord, turning the room instantly from noisy to not quite silent.
In the sudden quiet, Charlie’s high-pitched voice could be heard loud and clear. She continued to move the vacuum cleaner around the old rug as Greer and I stood there open-mouthed.
After several more seconds, during which Greer couldn’t contain her laughter, Charlie realized there was something wrong. She stopped and turned around, discovering the pulled cord and us watching her.
“Morning,” she said, pulling off her headphones and blushing furiously. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great, but I would have gotten up earlier if I’d known there was going to be a show,” said Greer, still grinning. She turned to me and added, “If she’s going to clean all the time, I’m going to like having her around. I’ll make all my mess on Saturday and she can just clean it up on Sunday!”
“You like having me around anyway,” Charlie pointed out. “As to the rest, try it if you dare!”
“Right, I’ll start breakfast,” said Greer, still sounding cheerful as she headed into the kitchen. Although I was sure we wouldn’t always have hot breakfasts to enjoy together, it was nice to know that sometimes we would.
“I’ll start the coffee,” I volunteered. As I followed Greer into the kitchen, plugging the vacuum back in on my way, I gave a sideways glance at Charlie to see how she was taking the news from last night. She looked like her normal bright self, and she didn’t seem to be giving me worried glances when she didn’t think I was looking. She also didn’t look like she hadn’t slept for worrying.
Maybe, I concluded, she was actually taking it well. I knew she was more upset about Andy than she was letting on, and her frantic cleaning only reinforced that impression. But I also knew she had to come to grief in her own time.
After breakfast we were just about to split up when Charlie said, “I’d like to discuss roommate rules, if you don’t mind. I have to run out today, but maybe tomorrow night after dinner?”
“Roommate rules?” Greer and I chorused together.
Greer looked downright alarmed. “I don’t follow rules well,” she added, as if to explain the face she was making.
“Every family has rules, at least every one I know. Without them there would be chaos, and no one likes that. We must discuss how we’re going to live together companionably. I’d hate to fight with either of you,” said Charlie. “So, tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said, glancing at Greer.
“Right, I don’t have a choice, since I live here, but otherwise I wouldn’t agree,” said Greer, looking no happier.
“If you didn’t have roommates you wouldn’t have to talk about roommate rules,” said Charlie.
“Okay, cool,” said Greer, heading upstairs with an air that said she was done with this conversation.
“I gotta go too,” I said. I had a big day and night ahead of me, after all. But halfway up the stairs I paused and said, “Charlie, do you know anything about the Pier Pearl?”
I expected her to say no. There was a lot of famous jewelry, none of which I knew anything about, and I knew of no reason why Charlie should know anything about it either.
Except that she was a nosy reporter, of course. She was just about to stick her headphones on again when she heard my question, stopped in her tracks, and said, “Do I ever! I got obsessed with that case a few years ago! It’s fascinating! It’s a local legend.”
“Think you can get me a couple of the articles about it? I remember it was stolen and then returned to the Coswells, but I don’t remember much else about it.”
“Sure thing! I’ll get them now,” she said. Charlie kept newspaper clippings that interested her in big black binders. Whether she savored the stories they told or how the articles told them, she had a massive collection, which had been the first thing she’d brought over from Andy’s. According to her, that was another thing he didn’t appreciate and very well might throw out if given half a chance.
This Sunday morning she came back with a binder marked “Mysteries” and handed it to me. “This is great! Happy reading!” she said, sticking the headphones back on at last.
“Happy cleaning,” I muttered, and hefted the heavy binder. I had a lot to read.
I flopped onto my bed and started flipping through the old clippings. Charlie was the queen of organization and had put everything chronologically, then alphabetically. It wasn’t hard for me to find the articles about the Pier Pearl. I skimmed several of them quickly, keeping my eyes out for key words like “murder” and “stolen” and “death.”
The first article explained how the Pearl had been stolen from the Coswells before, “Right under their very noses,” while the second article confirmed that the Coswells’ guest at the time, their old friend Arthur McCoy, had been murdered while the theft was taking place. He had been in the sitting room where they kept the safe inside of which the Pier Pearl was hidden. The thief had evidently known where the safe was kept and had gone straight there after he entered the home. McCoy challenged the thief, and the thief shot him. Given that McCoy was old at the time, it was hard to fathom the point of killing him. The intruder had tripped a number of alarms on the way in, so it wasn’t as if he’d have gone undetected if he hadn’t run into McCoy. The strangest part of the whole thing was that the Pier Pearl was returned a week later, left on the front door for the cook to find in the morning. The newspaper article ended by extolling the virtues of the honest cook.
How very strange! I stared down at the page for a long time, trying to understand what it all me
ant, but all I knew was this: the Pier Pearl had a colorful history, and it started with murder.
Chapter Fourteen
By the time I finished reading I was thoroughly fascinated and confused. My town’s history sure was nutty!
The pearl had been returned to the Coswells’ house in the middle of the night without explanation, so the only harm that had come of the whole affair was the murder of Mr. McCoy. Well, I personally thought murder was far worse than some stupid missing pearl, no matter how the newspaper slanted the story.
They never found the murderer.
At dusk it was time for me to head out and speak to Hank. He had agreed to meet me at the Mintwood Muddled Avenue Cemetery because it was much closer to the Babbling Brook Barn than Gracie’s mansion was. As the day wore on I had become more and more curious about who Hank would have with him, and what he or she was going to tell me about Gracie’s disappearance and the disappearance of the pearl. Although the priceless piece of jewelry had been returned all those years ago, there was no sign of it this time, and no sign of its owner. The family’s heirloom had been returned once before, but the cost had been high: one human life.
As usual, Paws was already in the Beetle when I went outside. I wrapped my blue sweater tighter around my shoulders, and as I approached the car I realized that His Majesty the Cat was glaring at me. It took me a minute to remember that I needed the green necklace for him to be able to accompany me off the property, and I had to dash back into the house to get it.
“Where to?” Paws asked, sitting up straighter once we were on the road.
“The Muddled Avenue Cemetery,” I said, “and then to speak with Morris and Morton at the barn. Hopefully they’re holding up okay.”
“Those two clowns are holding up just fine, I’m sure,” Paws grumbled. “Can’t they find somewhere else to trash?”
“Not you too,” I groaned. “That’s their home! They love it there! They don’t have anywhere else to turn! I can’t believe you’re so heartless.”
Witch Way to Mintwood (Witch of Mintwood Book 1) Page 10